Month: May 2016

Digimon Tamers came out in 2001, and aired in America on Saturday morning during the Fox Kids programming block.

Like many shows of that time, the dub (the English-language version) is not terribly good. The voice acting is largely fine, but the script is rather changed. Most of the edits are just added jokes, such as one Digimon Adventure villain’s mournful cry for pizza equality, but there are a few times it really changes the feel of a scene. In fact, watching the subtitled and dubbed version of the first Tamers episode is a fascinating experience: The English version includes far more dialogue, and it really highlights some differing values.

This makes it tempting to either go for the subtitled version or to try to watch both versions at once. Perhaps, at some point, I’ll try that. For now, however, I’m going to stick with the dub. This is partly because I want to revisit the series I watched as a child, but mostly because the dub is just easier to find. It’s streaming legally for free on Netflix, Hulu, and Crunchyroll. I can find the subbed version for free, but so far only on places of questionable legality.

In the interests of gathering the widest audience possible, I’m going with the dubbed version.

“Digimon Tamers changed my life, man!” I know it’s a silly phrase, but it really did. Digimon Tamers was the first time I recognized themes and philosophical questions in any kind of pop culture, and given that I’m now studying literature, that was a big development. I’d like to go back and revisit it now that I’m older, or at least a somewhat more experienced viewer.

But, after spending several days trying to write this entry, I’ve decided I can’t entirely talk about it alone. It is, after all, partially built on a post-modern move: That the events of the previous two seasons of Digimon are themselves just a popular work of fiction. The work is very consciously reacting to over 100 episodes of adventure, and it would be a bit silly to ignore that. Yet I don’t want to cover 100 episodes of another show just so I can talk about 50 which I do.

So here’s my pointlessly complicated method of handling this: I’ll do a week of preview articles, highlighting some particularly relevant entries from across both seasons of Digimon Adventure, along with some overview articles about the franchise in general and Digimon Tamers in particular.

Also worth discussing is the age-old issue of dubbed versus subbed, but I’ll tackle that separately.

EDIT: So that week of preview articles? Gone. Instead, I’m just going to cover Adventure 01 and 02 first. I was sketching out the articles and found that I wanted to talk about over half of each series anyhow, so… Instead I’m going to cover two things I didn’t want to, all so I can adequately cover the one thing I did, probably over a month from now.

Welcome to The New Miscellany! My name is Travis Stewart, and this is sort of a directory for anything I might do. This site is still under construction as of this posting, so there’s not too much to say just yet. Still, there’s a lot on my mind these days, and I’m eager to get started!